Unlicensed and Untrained…by Brendon Marks
The government recently released the “alarming results” of a study that determined the majority of young children are not receiving day care from trained workers; instead, they are being cared for by “unlicensed and untrained” providers. Who are these heinous perpetrators? They are relatives–mostly grandparents.
Government workers are particularly alarmed that grandparents are “unprepared” for the nurturing of young minds at a particularly vulnerable age. Well, if these loving, but “unlicensed and untrained” grandparents are so dangerous, where was the government when my generation needed them so badly to protect us during our formative years?
If they’re not qualified to be surrogate parents now, they must have been extremely under-qualified when they were young and inexperienced, full-time parents. Subsequently, being poor parents, they would have set a horrible example for their children, resulting in another generation of even worse parents.
Therefore, the percentage of young children who are being raised by untrained parents must be increasing all the time. We must put an immediate stop to this situation and establish parenting licenses. All prospective parents must apply for a license prior to the initiation of pregnancy, and only people who have had specific training or can demonstrate competency would be issued a license. (I’m talking about parenting, not pregnancy initiation.) This should not only reduce the number of abused or neglected children, but would also eliminate any problem of population explosion, depletion of the rain forest, and any number of other social ills that we can blame on our parents. A side benefit would be a lifetime job for the government analysts who conducted the study. Since they are the only ones who have the training to evaluate the competency of the caregivers, it stands to reason that they are also the only ones qualified to conduct the training classes.
Think about this. You can’t even go fishing without a license, even if you don’t catch anything. The simple act of attempting to catch a fish without a license is illegal. This is not true with parenting; you can have as many children as you want without proving to anyone that you even know which end to wipe and which end to feed. What if it was illegal to attempt to become a parent without a license? If authorities find out that you don’t know what the heck you’re doing they may take your children away, but I guarantee if they catch you fishing without a license, they’ll do a lot more than take away your fish. They may even confiscate your pole too. I know I’d hate to have that happen. Which are more important, children or fish?
Even if you do think that fish are more important, this plan would reduce the number of parents, which would reduce the number of children who would either grow up to be fishermen or to buy dead fish. Fewer fishermen mean good news for fish, dolphins, whales, and those who want to save them.
There are bound to be some who ignore the licensing requirements and become parents anyway with blatant disregard for the long-term effects of such callous behavior. Since there is nothing more important than the welfare of our children, we have no choice but to arrest and prosecute these scofflaws. Of course, we would then have to provide care for the children of our expanded prison population to prevent these children from being left in the hands of an unlicensed and untrained relative. At least all the children of these criminals would then be under the care of licensed and trained professionals and the problem would be solved.
